Michael Proctor's free kick with around twenty minutes remaining secured what could be a precious point for the Red Dragons in the crucial showdown with Mansfield Town at the Racecourse. A deflection off Phil Bolland from Michael Boulding's original effort had given the visitors a precious lead shortly after half-time and the relief around the Racecourse when Proccy equalised was tangible.

Brian Little was keen not to make excuses for a disappointing performance but vowed that we would carry on fighting, "It's easy to come up with an excuse and blame nervousness as a prime excuse; that would be an easy excuse.We just didn't play well, I don't really know why.

"We had to make a few changes but we didn't get to grips with the game in the middle of the park which was always going to be quite important.We planned to play with Danny (Sonner) all week, and then he's come in today and his Achilles was very sore has a problem. I think that we missed him today.

"Neither Jeff and Silvio were able to boss the game today really. Perhaps we got a little bit too obsessed with hitting Drewe (Broughton).

"I couldn't see them scoring but I couldn't see us scoring either. When they did score, you feared the worse and we had to try something.

"There were one or two shouts for Chris from the far side when I took him off, but the system I was changing to needed two out-and-out wingers, so I had to make the decision.I apologise to those fans who obviously like Chris, but they need to understand my job as well. If we make mistakes then we are honest enough to admit it but we need to all be in this together.

"Today we didn't play well but at least we've come out of it with something. Had we lost today it would have been a major disappointment to us. The way that we played it would have made it a very difficult week ahead for us.

"We look at the other results and we can see that we still are there. We've got games against sides just above us and we have games in hand. If we can win a couple then we can catch them so we're still in there which is the main thing. But I know it wasn't a performance which would encourage many people, including perhaps our own supporters, but it just didn't happen for us today which was a disappointment.

"We definitely see it as a point gained. We couldn't get to grips with the game. It was just one of those days where we said at half time that every one of them that you can play better.It wasn't one of those days where you can say 'get the ball to him because he's playing well'.We knew that we had to do better in the second half and everyone from both sides has tried but I don't think anybody on the field played particularly well today.

"We are just trying our best to get out of trouble. We will sit down with everybody which is what we do anyway, and look at what went wrong.We are all in it together, but we do shout at each other occasionally and we do encourage each other, there are lots of ways to get those points across.

"If we can win a couple of games quickly then that changes things. At the moment we have got fourteen games left and that is a lot of points.

"Today's result was decent after being a goal behind but at least we are still in there.

"We went behind to an unlucky goal and the way we were playing we weren't going to get a goal so we had to try something different. We brought two wide players on but I was disappointed that we could not get into the game before that. We changed things and it got us a point but I don't think that we play any better but at least we were different. As a manager you just try to do things and thankfully it got us a point, everyone understands and accepts it.

"As a group we are still in it together, and we will keep working at it, but as a group I'm just disappointed we didn't play better.

"We've had some hard games lately but this is a different type of game to those we've had lately because of the circumstances.

"Nervousness is an easy excuse but I'm not looking for excuses. We did make a lot of mistakes which we haven't been making lately; players falling over the ball; two players going for the same ball; two players leaving the ball for each other. If it's nervousness, fine but we are not looking for excuses. We will be honest enough to say that we didn't play well."